How we work

PACSA is a faith-based social justice and development NGO that has been in operation since 1979. PACSA operates in the uMgungundlovu region of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and focusses on socio - economic rights, gender justice, youth development, livelihoods and HIV & Aids. Our work and our practice seek to enhance human dignity. We are convinced that those who carry the brunt of the problem must be a part of the solution - at the heart of PACSA’s core strategy is the notion “nothing about us without us.”

PACSA has two strategies:

Process Facilitation

Grassroots organisations act in their own names and are accompanied in their own advocacy and development.

We understand accompaniment as critical solidarity with those who suffer indignity; through this solidarity we strengthen each other as we construct a new world. Through our core strategy of Process Facilitation we provide:

Spaces in which to identify, develop and refine strategies.

Assistance to organisations to identify their own developmental goals and take the necessary steps towards achieving them.

Support to groups as they build their movement and their voice.

Facilitation of useful linkages within the wider community.

Specialist services, as and when required, including training, research and communication support among others.

Building Social Justice Activism

PACSA acts in its own name to build social justice activism in the broader society. We reach out to the broader community to grow consciousness and support for justice issues. This is done by:

Conducting research and advocacy to contribute to a world in which all can live with dignity.

Disseminating information and communications

Organising events to reach out to a broad public audience.

Encouraging open dialogue.

Networking with other organisations and churches at regional, national and global levels.

Principles of Practice

Drawing on the past three years of action-reflection, practice development and feedback from our partners in the field and in struggle, PACSA developed the following nine principles of practise to guide how we work and to hold us accountable to our intention in the world. These principles form the basis of PACSA’s accountability to our partners and our internal performance management system.

I am the most powerful “tool”

Hold spaces to get a shared outcome

We ask critical questions to open the process and deepen an understanding of context

Our Primary resources for the work are peoples’ agency including their experience, skills, knowledge, expertise and connections

Asking, conversing, imagining, we walk together in a co-created journey

We are in genuine relationships of solidarity with people/groups which respect autonomy based on shared principles of dignity and social justice

We connect people to people to enable learning, solidarity and using their power together to effect the social change they desire

PACSA submission on the proposed National Minimum Wage

We call on the Portfolio Committee on Labour to consider the political consequences of passing a poverty-level National Minimum Wage which with the possible amendments to the Labour Relations Act and Basic Conditions of Employment Act will be felt for generations. These will lock Black South African workers and their families into deeper poverty and reproduce the low growth, low wage and low jobs trajectory. Read the full submission

Resource paper on the proposed VAT and fuel levy hike and its impact for the foods on our plates.

Budget 2018 proposed hiking the VAT rate to 15% and levying a 52 cents hike on the fuel levy. Using food as an entry point and drawing on PACSA’s food price barometer research, the following short paper is intended as a resource to better understand and conceptualise the impact of these proposals for working class households. Read full paper

PACSA letter to the Standing Committee on Finance on expanding the zero-rated basket to mitigate the effect of VAT

Expanding the basket of zero-rated foods has been contested on the basis of the following arguments:

Expanding the basket may disproportionately benefit the rich (because rich or poor we share quite a few common foods).

Selecting the new foods to be included in the zero-rated basket is incredibly complex as what foods are eaten, how foods are prepared and changing households purchasing patterns are all influenced by household specific and other complicated external variables. Even with the experience PACSA has around tracking food patterns and prices, there are just far too many variables in creating an expanded zero-rated basket that responds to the requirements of the working class and the impact on the larger economy. At best, we would be able to make an educated guess – but this hardly seems a sufficient response to the crisis we are in. Read full statement